


Cutaway

by shutupnerd



Series: recount and recover [2]
Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Hajime and Izuru are a System, Identity Issues, Melancholy, Memory Loss, Not Beta Read, Oneshot, Side Story, Standalone, Trauma, actually sonia does, danganronpa - Freeform, did, haircut, hajime cuts his hair, hajime has identity issues, kind of venty but not really, post sdr2, postgame, scissors, the night before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutupnerd/pseuds/shutupnerd
Summary: Sonia finds Hajime in the middle of the night and helps him cut his hair. This is a little prequel to An Account of Events, but can be read as a standalone.
Relationships: Hinata Hajime & Sonia Nevermind
Series: recount and recover [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808287
Comments: 6
Kudos: 192





	Cutaway

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Somehow I always end up back in this set of fics. Here's one more, because I just can't leave it alone. Enjoy!

The bathroom was clean and sterile, smelling faintly of cleaning products. The shower and toilet were bleached to perfection, the medicine cabinet dust-free despite the clear lack of use. Every fluorescent light beamed as if it had just been placed yesterday. The mirror in particular was polished to blinding reflectiveness--even the most stubborn of vampires could have seen themselves in it. 

Hajime didn’t like what he saw, sitting on the stool they had dragged in (it was wooden and thoroughly mismatched everything else in the bathroom. Somehow, it made it more human.). The unfamiliar weight down his back wasn’t helped by him being able to see it. It was another reminder that he didn’t look like himself--he hadn’t the heart to tell Sonia, who brushed “his” hair out, that he couldn’t recognize himself in the reflection. There were  _ elements _ of him, sure, but one green eye and an old tie a Hajime Hinata did not make. These were hands callused to doing work he had no memory of. Well, right now, he couldn’t remember much of anything. He knew the simulation, he knew how he had fought and sentenced him and four friends out. He knew how the rest of them lay sleeping, with no idea of how he was going to wake them up. He knew that there were two voices in his head. One was his, one was…

_ Are you sure you’re okay with this, Izuru?  _

He hovered close to the front, watchful and keeping a close eye on Hajime’s frankly delicate emotional state. All things considered, he was in a far better mindframe--he had his memories, as far as Hajime knew. At least, he certainly acted like it, for how purposeful he had been and how willing he had been to let Hajime take the helm.

It hadn’t been long since they’d all woken up. They had barely even so much as tangled themselves apart when Hajime first saw himself in a mirror. It hadn’t been him, not at all. It was a stranger, someone else moving his hands and eyes in the same way he was, but it _ wasn’t him.  _

_ Yes. It was already cut significantly. It seems to trouble you even at this length, so I do not mind if you finish cutting it. _

Hajime was keeping a little list of things about Izuru that he should probably remember. A lot of them seemed stupid, but you never knew when they would come in handy.

_ Hajime’s list of things to remember about Izuru: _

_ -he likes fruit snacks, but not the red ones. _

_ -actually, it seems like he hates anything strawberry flavored, so he avoids red snack foods.  _

_ -I don’t think he actually hates anyone else here, but they all hate him--or at least, really don’t trust him.  _

_ -Sonia doesn’t hate him, and I don’t think Nagito did either. _

_ -he doesn’t hate me; he didn’t know I existed, beyond a name.  _

_ -he thought I was dead, because he was the only person in the headspace.  _

  
  


(Hajime had no idea that Izuru carried his own list.)

_ Izuru’s list of things to remember about Hajime: _

_ -he is afraid, because he isn’t sure about what’s going on. _

_ -when he gets nervous, he doesn’t like to eat because his stomach gets upset. _

_ -he does not recognize himself in the mirror. _

_ -he needs to cut his (our, perhaps), hair.  _

_ -the others trust him immensely, almost inversely to how little they trusted me. _

_ -he is having trouble remembering things. He will not remember what I remember.  _

_ -he prefers blue raspberry-flavored things, but cherry works when it isn’t available. _

Sonia put the brush down, sectioning off the first piece of his hair. “Are you ready, Hajime?”

“Yeah.” She began to cut away at his hair, and instantly his head felt a little clearer. The weight lessened ever-so-slightly, but the fog went with it. His hair still would be the wrong color, but that was only a temporary problem. This was far more fixable than anything else, a little bit of agency he had regained. (He wasn’t yet sure quite why that was so important--well, yeah, they were out of the simulation, but there was something a little  _ more  _ to it than even that, wasn’t there?)

“I am sorry in advance, Hajime. I am not sure how even I will be able to make it.”

“That’s fine,” he reassured her, still not looking in the mirror. “As long as it’s short, it can be messy. I just...want it gone, really.”

“Alright then.” She continued her work, humming a snatch of a song that Hajime didn’t recognize. Perhaps something from Novoselic, a home she’d likely not see for a long time, if ever again at all. Apparently, she’d razed the country. Burnt it to ashes and laughed all the while. That wasn’t the Sonia he knew now, but, then again, he hadn’t known them...at all. 

He remembered that much. He had known Chiaki. Had collided with her at a fountain and never had enough time to play as many video games with her as they wanted to. He’d always been busy, too busy. But when he did have the time, and they met after school, they could have sat there for hours, just playing in silence, peppered by his good-natured defeatist commentary. (It was to be expected that she’d never lost to him.)

Would she recognize him, if she saw him like this?   
  
(Izuru knew the answer to that. Far too well. So for now, he stayed quiet.)

Lengths of dark hair fell to the floor. He’d been so desperate to cut it that he would have used a knife in the kitchen at midnight. He had had the blade in one hand and his hair bunched in the other--almost about to shear it off with a window as his only reflective surface. But Sonia had found him just in time, coaxed him to put it down. 

She’d hugged him close for far longer than what was socially “acceptable”, but exactly as long as he’d needed it. “Let me help you, Hajime! That way, it can be done properly, and we can clean up after. I will be able to make it shorter with scissors.”   
  


She’d led him to the bathroom and grabbed a broom in the process. It was 12:36 AM by now. Neither of them asked why the other person was awake. The sounds of pacing from the makeshift infirmary confirmed that someone else was up, too. Nobody would bother haranguing anyone else about how much or little they slept, when none of them had anything close to a healthy cycle. It wasn’t really something that was high on the priority list of “get this fixed.” They slept when they wanted to, and when they woke up in tears, they’d keep it to themselves. 

At least, that was how it was right now. Since Makoto and Kyoko and Byakuya had left, they all had fallen apart in their own little ways. Nobody yet knew that Izuru remained (except Makoto, for now, who had been given a veritable tongue-lashing from him) and until Hajime knew for sure they could handle it, he wasn’t going to be forward about it. It wasn’t that he was  _ hiding  _ Izuru (he wasn’t), but he saw the shattered look in everyone’s eyes. They weren’t ready to face him, and he doubted Izuru was ready to face them. He hadn’t really known what to expect from him, after they had managed to pull apart and speak for the first time. He was quiet, kept to himself. Even when he was as close as he was now, his thoughts were quick and not nearly as loud as Hajime had thought they would have been. Of course, they could and did fall into each other’s tracks of thought, but they had done fairly well of staying separate. 

His head felt lighter as she kept cutting lengths away, thick sections of dark hair falling away without much circumstance. For how important this was, there was no real celebration to it. There wouldn’t be much celebrating for a while, he assumed. There were too many sleeping people to be able to think about anything even remotely resembling a party or congratulations. They had survived by condemning and stepping on the others. There was no joy in that.

“Here. Hold still--I found a razor to get the back of your neck, but you must not move. I do not want to accidentally cut you.”

He complied and bent down, staring at the tiles as she worked slowly and methodically. They were polished, clean. Everything was clean. It should have been comforting, knowing that at least this facility had been prepared to safely hold them, but the perfect spotlessness chilled him. He couldn’t quite place  _ why,  _ but the unending cleanliness of everything around him felt a little...well...disconcerting. 

(Izuru had more than a few theories as to why Hajime felt so nervous, but he kept quiet. Neither of them wanted to broach that, not yet.)

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to do this by myself.”

“It is no trouble, Hajime.”

It wasn’t a razor meant for cutting hair like this, but it was what they had. They simply had to make do with what they could find and what they had been given. Sonia took the scissors again (once again, not meant for cutting hair, but who was going to have salon scissors on an island?) and snipped a little further, cutting as short as she could before shaving again.

He felt hazy, tired. Like he didn’t really want to talk or interact with anyone yet, but he had to. He wouldn’t have been able to do this himself. Well, maybe he could have, but he wasn’t about to try his luck using a razor on a place he couldn’t see. 

_ Did you cut your hair? Everyone said it used to be even longer. It looked longer in Neo World, too. _

_ It was cut shortly before we were put into the program. _

_ Who-- _

Izuru went firmly silent--it said more than enough. They hadn’t been together long, but Hajime was beginning to pick up on his quirks and his personality as a whole. If he didn’t want to answer, he wouldn’t say so or avoid the question. He’d either shut Hajime down or vanish entirely. It was annoying, sure, but it got the message across loud and clear. At least he wasn’t dodgy or someone who didn’t leave his boundaries unknown. Right now, clarity was exactly what Hajime needed, and Izuru seemed to be more than happy to give it--at least when it came to him. 

“I believe I am finished with the back and sides. But you still have some hair in the front I need to cut. Would you please turn around for me?”

He did as he was asked, closing his eyes as she gently positioned his head and began to cut away again. Her fingers were cool on his face, reassuringly steady. Ever since they had awoken (granted, it hadn’t been long), Sonia seemed to have sprung back the fastest, her composure regained in a matter of hours after they all woke up in a blind mix of confusion and panic. It had taken Hajime specifically hours just to pull apart from Izuru, and almost a day to be oriented enough to front and act as if he was okay. 

None of them were okay. They were all just trying their hand at being good actors. Nobody was asleep in the building right now. Hajime and Fuyuhiko’s rooms were side-by-side--the sound of pacing had been unmistakable. Kazuichi had put together and taken apart the same alarm clock at least four times so far; it was no stretch to say he was doing it again right now. Akane was outside, even though they had promised not to go out until they were feeling better. She was running somewhere, nobody knew where or when she’d come back. She would come back (probably) when she got hungry, but it seemed she just needed to be  _ out.  _ He could appreciate the sentiment. He wanted to run, too. Go somewhere where he felt safe. 

Nothing felt entirely safe. Nothing in here, in this too-clean room, in this too-clean  _ building  _ that ran the air conditioning too cold and where all the food was just a little stale. But outside probably didn’t feel safe either, not when it was supposed to be the spitting image of the simulation. (If the music venue was there, would there still be rope hanging from the rafters? Would there be blood in the beach house? Would the warehouse be...burnt beyond recognition?) 

“I am finished. You can open your eyes now.” 

The person in the mirror still didn’t look like him. His hair was too dark, and his eyes still didn’t match, and the scars had failed to fade. But the resemblance was closer than before. Even the old bit that spiked up on the top of his head had reappeared. It wasn’t much, but it...was. 

His head was lighter, and the stones in his gut had lessened. This was...this was more like him. He felt more like himself, again. Whether he would ever fully have that sense of self again was another question entirely, but this was certainly a step in the right direction. 

_ Has it been done?  _ Izuru returned closer to the front, sensing the turmoil in Hajime’s thoughts.

_ Yes. _

_ Do you feel better? _

His mouth was set.  _ I’m not sure.  _

_ I see.  _

“Thank you again, Sonia. You should go to bed--I’ll clean up.”

“It is no problem; I was happy to help you. Are you sure?”

He nodded, smiling without much mirth but with legitimate gratitude. “Yeah, I’m sure. I can handle this.”

He stood from the stool and gave her another hug, relishing how hair no longer fell into his eyes and whispered around him when he moved. He was moving more freely now. It still wasn’t him, but there was nothing more to be done about it yet.

When Sonia left, he closed the door behind her. If he didn’t sweep up now, it’d never get done. He took the broom without much thought and cleaned up mindlessly, purposefully ignoring what exactly he was sweeping up. If he didn’t look too closely, he didn’t have to think about what it was, why it had to be shorn off so completely. It was some sort of recovery, a victory in his identity. Victory didn’t stall exhaustion. He needed to go to bed, too. They all needed to rest. They would wake up tired; it was unavoidable. There was no real rest, not really. Not yet. But they were going to go through their things in the morning--he might as well get a little sleep before then. 

His dreams, for now, were blurry. Messy. He couldn’t discern much, other than that they were  _ bad.  _ He was getting nervous to close his eyes at this point, but maybe finding his old things would calm his nerves. 

He emptied the dustpan into the bin and splashed some cold water on his face before heading back to his room. (He passed Akane on the way back. Neither of them said a word.) The pajamas Future Foundation had left for him were a little too tight around his chest and shoulders and too loose everywhere else, barely fitting over his hips and swamping his feet--he tripped into bed. And yet, he was thoroughly disinterested in finding anything else right now. It was too late (or too early?) to worry about it, to worry about anything. He worried, still. The rocks in his gut were lessened, sure, but by no means were they gone.

He gripped the extra pillow between his arms, curling up around it. The air conditioner made the room just a little too cold, but he had no idea where the thermostat was to change it, or if he could even fiddle with it.

He sighed and pulled the comforter over him, falling into a restless and hazy sleep. Tomorrow would be good. Tomorrow, things would finally clear up. It would be the start of something new, where he could really start to get better and remember what happened beyond the killing game.

Yeah, tomorrow would be good. He’d make sure of it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. You are loved. Remember to drink a glass of water and brush your teeth today !!!! - fen <3


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